The switch to seasonal reward tracks in Hearthstone was part of the reason I stopped playing and all of the reason why I don’t expect to ever go back.
I feel like data about customer behaviour in seasons is vulnerable to survivor bias. It keeps the people who were staying anyway. But it gives the people leaving a reason to never return.
(but to be fair I’m not a marketing/business person and am really just rationalizing my own preferences here)
Well, then this is how we’re proven wrong.
The moment blizzard announces that they will allow players to retroactively earn PvP tier sets, we’ll just go ahead and assume they’re doing it to try to bring in new players or earn new subs.
Of course, most people claim PvP is a mini game in and of itself, and only a niche segment of the playerbase really even engages with it, particularly rated PvP.
So when we’ve gotten to the point where blizzard is making that decision because they need subs, the game’s already dead. It will have been dead for quite some time.
Frogs dropped more threads than Bronze.
There’s three months. Once you hit a comfortable spot in your gearing, doesn’t matter the level, run Normal raids, there’s 5k bronze a day. Plus a total of 8k from dailies. That’s 13k a day. There’s still 80 days left. And most of that stuff isn’t limited time.
If it’s not clear, I don’t care about the frogs. I don’t even think there’s anything wrong with it from a player behavior standpoint. And in the grand scheme of things, I believe it doesn’t matter. Quite frankly, I don’t agree with most of the complaints people give about the frogs. Most of the complainers are people who don’t bother to min/max in retail, so why all of a sudden they’re so angry about the frogs is beyond me.
The purpose of the frogs is to illustrate this, no more, no less:
On a spectrum of healthy FOMO vs unhealthy FOMO, a situation such as the frogs meets the criteria in the logical framework I’ve established as being on the “unhealthy FOMO” end of the spectrum
I am immune to FOMO, it’s awesome! My secret, think about how little you care about what mount or tmog someone else has, that’s how little everyone cares about what you have.
But the people staying are the whales who will never leave and spend way more money than the ones who left.
I’m in no way supporting it, just being honest with the reality. Forum complaints mean nothing as long as the complainer stays subscribed.
Edit: just deleting all the unprompted word salad.
It’s a good rationale. Wish everyone shared it
I have yet to see anyone say “I left WoW cos I couldn’t get an old transmog”
These kind of topics appearing are always interesting, as we’ve seen at the start of DF s4 blizz isnt bringing back any elite sets, if they were to come back this would of been the season. I really wanted those werebear skins from MT but it seems blizz has no intention of bringing em back, they gave us a nature one instead which i’m fine with.
If they bring back elite sets people wouldnt want them to stop there, KSM, Glad, CM, when they talked about bringing back that aotc mount from i think MOP? Idk but it caused an uproar and i think blizz is trying to avoid that.
Well, I’m sorry about the event that happened to you.
The fact that you’re not complaining about it shouldn’t be a reason to think that everyone else can’t complain about it.
And even though it’s an “extraordinary event,” we can diminish the magnitude of the cause-effect to other consequences like - adult life, work, sudden problems, other games, other activities, milder health issues that can occur occasionally, etc…
There are various ways, again, to think about the case of someone not being able to play in a particular season.
What I disagree with those who are against FOMO or items locked by season is how they should “come back” - I don’t find it interesting to buy a gladiator mount for 50 honor marks… it should be something of equivalent difficulty.
There are countless ways to reach a solution for this, it’s highly debatable. In this case, a good approach is to have a token for each thing - for elite sets, a token when reaching 1800 on a new character… for gladiator mounts, a token when reaching 2.4k+ and maintaining the push (I don’t remember exactly what’s needed for the gladiator mount).
But anyway, one thing I noticed is that you’re in the same situation as others - you have good skills in maintaining a high gladiator rank, which would be the so-called “1%” (I don’t know how many % of players are glads), and then you believe that others shouldn’t have the prestige of having an item from this category because you want to have something special for having this skill, to be rewarded for it. Fair enough, but… what I argued about is to have the possibility in the future for other glads to be able to farm old stuff, as well as those who reach 1800~2k (to have the old elite sets). Each one at their respective “comfort” point.
Exactly. When you open that floodgate, then any other gate will appear logically arbitrary.
Best solution is the one that already exists. Ignore the loud minority of players who feel entitled to things they didn’t earn and stay the course 
Also dismantle the notion that mage towers constitute unhealthy fomo or predatory business practices
But frogs don’t represent that. Because frogs dropped more threads than Bronze.
And if people have an unhealthy psychological phenomenon going on, that’s on their end. Not the game’s.
Again, most of that stuff we can already get now in game. And right now, it’s even easier to farm in retail with daily resets.
This is a player created issue. Not a Blizzard one.
Nuuuupe.
They’ve corrupted (no pun intended) the prestigiousness of the gladiator title because it’s no longer %. It’s a flat rating and you just have to win 50 games once you’ve achieved that rating. There have been seasons of massive rating inflation, and there are several players that have only ever earned gladiator in these select seasons. Fair play to them. I’m not trying to take that away from them. But a substantial portion of 2.4K glads would never have earned % glad. Not to sound elitist. It’s just a fact.
But if the average gladiator rank in a season is 300+ rating higher than another season, then that would mean a player who has no business being in a gladiator range in a typical season could then use that season to purchase an item from a previous season, when they would certainly not have earned it back then.
The point of time sensitive rewards in PvP is that there are a significant amount of variables that go into achieving rating in arena.
You have, to name a few:
Simply because you’ve mastered enough of the variables above (and more) in a current season does not mean you have the right to display you’ve mastered them in a previous point of time.
Obviously. That’s what FOMO is.
The matter of discussion is what of that FOMO is healthy (a player wants to achieve a goal specifically because of that goal’s prestige, and the goal is reasonably accessible to all) or unhealthy FOMO, which is typically the result of a poorly devised system or an unintended situation.
Same. Got the urge to return, saw a hero portrait i fancied. And it was fomoed.
While also dissuading returning players as well as newcomers.
“Look at all these things you can never obtain because reasons” just isn’t engaging to get slapped in the face with.
Yes, that would be an awful marketing strategy and an awful internalization of the opportunities that lie ahead.
Fortunately, things you can’t obtain aren’t seen in the appearances UI.
Fortunately, if the current game is good, people will come back.
You think people are going to decide to not subscribe / resubscribe to a great game on the basis they can’t earn a time sensitive reward from six years ago?
Cause if you think that, you’re wrong. It’s just that simple.
If I see a cool transmog, and someone tells me “you can’t earn this. It’s a prestigious reward from a few seasons ago.” My mentality is not defeatist. My mentality is “well, okay then. I’ll earn the prestigious award from this season!”
And if that’s not your mentality, sorry, but you’re taking the easy way out, and with that approach, you were never going to earn the prestigious item anyways.
Couldnt agree more, i missed out on s1 df elite set but managed to obtain the s2 one which imo is 3x better, the amount of items we can still obtain compared to those that are no longer obtainable is immense, no point in looking back at past limited items when theyre better ones in game and better ones to come in the future, i for one will be collecting all of them in TWW.
I see nothing wrong with season fomo, even when it comes to real life i’m sure most of us know we can’t have everything we want, there will always be better rewards in the future, blizz has even tried to accommodate average pve players and pvp players by making it so you can buy a piece of the elite set from a vendor
The easy way out is to continue to feed and encourage the system.
The point I’m making is within the confines of earning rewards.
It takes more effort to earn prestigious items than to not earn them.
Your point is entirely irrespective of that concept.
Your point is to submit to arbitrary systems.
They’re not arbitrary, and no. “You can earn x between y and z” is not arbitrary. It is well-defined, reasonable and understandable. “Arbitrary”, by definition, is a fundamentally incorrect word to be applied in this case.
My point is to play a video game. By extension, I have to work within the confines of that video game.
You’re not necessarily wrong about submission to systems, but the wording is just awful, and it’s a bit obvious.